


You have Me.

by sharlatanka



Category: Doom Patrol (Comics), Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Gen, Other, platonic life partnered old people Larry and Rita
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 19:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18184508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharlatanka/pseuds/sharlatanka
Summary: Musing on the 60 year codependent friendship between Larry and Rita.“In 1969 Rita and Larry, heavily drunk, watched the moon landing. Larry was transfixed and said that if he could, he would have cried over it. Rita said it must be fake. Larry said it was real, he’d nearly been in orbit and because of that he should know. Rita said it couldn’t have been possible because she had been on a sound stage for real, and not “nearly been” on a soundstage, and so she would know, and that those men in the suits were clearly on a soundstage.”





	You have Me.

_“Just_ try _supporting me for once. Jane has Cliff, who do I get?”_

 

It was 1964 everywhere but the manor, until the Chief burst through the doors that day. Rita hadn’t seen him for almost three months. It must have been a Monday. Or a Thursday. Days went the way of years, when she was alone— categorized by how they felt rather than what they were. And she was always alone. Rita and her screen reflection, Rita and her mirror reflection, sometimes monstrous and mocking. Rita alone in the silent drawing room, the only human, warm contact her own with her now alien skin. The body of a stranger that she didn’t understand but wore her face.

 

But someone other than Rita was on that stretcher. The Chief told her to stay back; that it was dangerous. She’d decided as much before that: the figure must have been unconscious, eyes shut. From behind a door frame she watched a scorched and sticky forearm slip from under the sheet over the body. Eyes burned away? It didn’t comfort the agoraphobia, the fear of being known. It had, after all, been only a decade. But nevertheless, she continued to look, until the Chief took him to the lab.

 

She didn’t see the figure after that. But in a way she and the body became close. While the Chief was occupied controlling the dangerous levels of radiation he explained were coming off of the body, he tasked Rita with outfitting one of the guest rooms. For Larry, as Chief said. Larry. Such a usual name for a radioactive body. While she affixed special metal panels to the wall of the guest room she imagined Larry’s usual life, the kind she would never have again. Of course, she assured herself, her life as a starlet was never usual. But she played a housewife a few times, in _Southwestern Belle_ and _Winds of August._

 

Maybe Larry came home to a wife and children. Maybe he ate his meatloaf, embraced his wife, read to his children, and then went to sleep with a warm body at his side. The thought began to depress her. Now that he was in the hands of the Chief, he would live, but never again in that usual way.

 

When the houseguest was ready to move into his own room, Rita tried to be as hospitable as possible, despite the nerves she was feeling. With one hand pressed to a trembling cheek, she smiled as Chief led the now-mummified figure into the room. She couldn’t see his expression, of course, but his stooped figure and dragging heels told her all she needed to know about his emotional state. She would have been the same, had she not been a literal puddle at the time.

 

“Welcome, Mr. Trainor!” She shouted, much louder than she intended. When one never has to speak to anyone, one tends to lose the ability to regulate their decibels.

 

The Chief dropped Larry’s duffle bag into the room. “Larry, this is Rita. She’s lived here for a while now— spends more time at home than me. I’m sure you’ll get to know each other well enough soon.” He then walked out, despite Rita’s protests. Mr. Trainor had already seen enough of him for a lifetime, he said. And duty called, he said.

 

Larry seemed to stare at Rita for a long moment. She felt the skin on her cheek under her palm groan under its own weight. She pushed her palm up further. Finally he slumped down onto the wire frame bed and wrapped his head in his hands without so much as a word.

 

Rita exhaled shortly and nervously. “W-well _Larry,_ I… I suppose you need some time to settle. If you need anything, I’m right down the hall. But ahm… try not to need anything too much. And knock first.”

 

He didn’t give any indication that he was listening.

 

“Okay…. ah….” she backed out of the room nervously, backwards. “Toodle-loo…”

 

_Toodle-loo?_

 

_Good God, Rita. You’re a Golden Globe nominated actress._

 

The weeks passed. The Chief came and went. Larry never left his room. Rita continued to knit, look at regular pictures and moving pictures of Rita, and a few times a day place a full plate of food in the containment chamber before Larry’s room. Then months passed. More of the same.

 

Until one day, Rita wasn’t watching Rita on the television alone.

 

Larry lowered himself (painfully, it seemed) onto the couch next to Rita. She didn’t dare say anything that would scare him off. She just focused on herself on the screen in self-centered herself in the meditation of it.

 

“So you _are_ her.” He mumbled quietly. She barely heard.

 

“Hn…?”

 

“Rita Farr.”

 

Music to her ears. “Yes, I am.” She noticed he sat a little straighter, his chin a little up. Hers, now sky high at all times, got a little bit higher.

 

“Hn. My mother loved your movies. She’d make me go to one every time I was in town from the academy. I’d always think, ‘how many movies can one woman make’?”

 

“Around thirty-five.”

 

“So that’s it. I watched some with her, and then some with my friend, John. He was a…. well, he was also a big fan.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“He should be here, sitting with you. Well, no, he shouldn’t…. but…” he grew even quieter, and his voice trembled. “He should be…. and I _shouldn’t_ be… I shouldn’t _be…_ ”

 

“Now, Larry, no talking while I’m on the screen!” She intervened gently, but firmly, recognizing the emotional spiral he was sliding down. “That’s the only rule here— well, besides the other rules.” She pointed to the screen, and smiled softly as he followed the gesture. “And besides, we all have things we can’t yet say. It’s been ten years for me. Not that I don’t hope that sometime you may want to tell me.”

 

He remained silent. She swirled her Manhattan around in it’s glass. “You know already this life, this _unending life,_ is difficult…” a much happier on-screen Rita performed a proud monologue in between her pauses. “One day you are a star at the top of her game, and Frank Sinatra offers you a drink and shares his cigarettes at your premiere. And then the next day you’re in a mental hospital in Cape Town tearing the skin off of your arms with your teeth.” She laughed sadly, but gently, sweetly. “Although I suppose you don’t have an agent to cover for your disappearance by saying that you became pregnant and quit Hollywood in order to start your family away from all the flash bulbs.”

 

“That’s funny.” Larry replied, in a much steadier voice. “I didn’t hear that. I heard you became a drunk.”

 

“Hm.” She downed the drink in her glass, snapping the toothpick along with the cherry into her mouth. “It’s good to finally meet you, Larry. Now are you going to be impolite, or will you be having a Manhattan, too?”

 

“I suppose I could use one.”

 

“Oh, you _deserve_ one.”

 

And so the months became years.

 

In 1969 Rita and Larry, heavily drunk, watched the moon landing. Larry was transfixed and said that if he could, he would have cried over it. Rita said it must be fake. Larry said it was real, he’d nearly been in orbit and because of that he should know. Rita said it couldn’t have been possible because she had been on a sound stage for real, and not “nearly been” on a soundstage, and so she would know, and that those men in the suits were clearly on a soundstage.

 

In March of  1970 Larry told Rita all about John. Rita told Larry about her arranged celebrity marriage to a gay star.

 

In June of 1970 Rita told Larry about her baby.

 

In 1971, Rita met the negative spirit, and gave it a stern talking to.

 

In 1972 Larry talked Rita out of a panic attack and helped her gather her shoulder and right ear off of the bathroom floor.

 

In 1973 Rita gifted Larry his first orchid, given to her originally by the Chief when she had arrived.

 

In 1976 it is possible that Larry saved Rita from death by Hammerhead.

 

In 1977 Rita knit her fourth sweater Larry, and that one he actually liked.

 

In 1980 Rita persuaded Larry to put makeup over his bandages to make him look more “lively.”

 

In 1989 Larry and Rita and Cliff watched the Berlin Wall come down. It didn’t compare to life at the manor. Now they had a robot man in the basement.

 

In 1997 Cliff persuaded Larry to let her paint his bandages again. Makeup looked more natural now than it did in the 80s, he said. Larry acquiesced. After it was done, he looked like Rita. Rita said he looked so handsome.

 

In 2018 Rita said to Larry, _“Just_ try _supporting me for once. Jane has Cliff, who do I get?”_

 

And Larry, for a moment staring down the barrel of over half a century of friendship and intimate cohabitation, of movie nights and crying nights, of screaming and shouting, and laughing, and drinking, should have said:

 

_“It’s me. You have me.”_

 

Except that he didn’t. He said nothing.

 

And Rita, knowing Larry perhaps better than Larry wanted to know himself, walked away during that silence she expected so much.

 

And Larry, knowing Rita perhaps better than Rita wanted to know herself, knew that her walking away was just Rita running from fear. He decided to stand up for something, this one time in decades, to show her that there was nothing to be afraid of. She would realize eventually, in her own, prideful time, as Rita was wont to do. And in the meantime, whether she realized it or wanted it or not, she would always have Larry.


End file.
